First off, thank you to all who took the time to help me out with my Kirin questions before. I just fought Kiring again tonight and I'm very pleased. I'm just going to share what I did here and how well it worked.

THE QUICK AND DIRTY I went 84% accuracy on regular melee hits (ws's were sneak attack, so they do not illustrate accuracy). A couple of hits did land for zero damage, they were counted as hits in my 84%. Almost all the misses came when aggressor was down. I had no bard or corsair buffing me for accuracy; this hit rate came from my gear and merits. Sneak Attack + Steel Cyclone landed for 400-550ish damage.

WEAPON SKILL All weapon skills were Sneak Attack + Steel Cyclone. We kited Kirin, so Trick Attack on to a tank was not a possibility. So I knew I was doing well when Kirin turned to me. One time crossing a quarter of the room to give me another swipe.

(Steel Cyclone has a huge buff to attack and you get a crit that does not miss from sneak attack. So it was all STR > VIT > Nothing else matters).

THOUGHTS On a kited Kirin fight you are going to die if you are a melee DD. You can't trick on to a tank and the tank is not generating much hate. So dying means you did the most damage. It's perverse, but it can't be helped. While many struggled to get to 100 tp I raced to it in just a few attack rounds. I did not miss a weapon skill. Kirin unloaded back to back weapon skills one me on one occasion (death) and ran across the room to get me after hitting the kiter on another. For someone with a gear set consisting almost entirely of AH gear I have to say I'm happy with the output. What's more, most of this gear is my regular equipment, it did not cost much to convert my regular rig to this rig.

Once again my title is Kirin Captivator. This time it puts a smile on my face.

ty for the bomb core tp suggestion, I had been knocking that around inside my skull as a possible way to lower the chance of hitting for zero, but wasn't 100% sure I would keep my tp.

As for war/sam... well, either meditate or zanshin alone should get me to 100% faster, together they should rocket me to 100% tp. My first concern is the weapon skill. If I do not have sneak attack I cannot pile on str/vit, so I'm not certain I would do more damage as I would have to ws in my acc gear set. My second concern is my sky ls seems to like to do another god or two when doing a kirin run (time permitting). I'm new to the ls, but the method of choice seems to be to put a pld on each side of the mob and then DDs SATA the plds. So, I think I'm going to have to keep with the /thf. But I do appreciate the suggestion and if I am wrong about any of this, please let me know.

Steel Cyclone gets an attack boost but it is not as high as Sam's Y/G/K. So first thing I would suggest is sticking with bomb core and amemet +1 on your WS (especially when you are fighting something with the defense/level of Kirin). Secondly, 1 hit WS's (at least for 2 handed weapons) have a HUGE acc bonus (somewhere in the realm of autocap or possibly +150acc) so you dont need SA to make sure that it hits.

But glad to hear that you did much better!

I actually did my first ever Kirin a couple nights ago (responded to a pick up Kirin zerg which sounded like a fun way to die). I went War/sam and while it was a disaster (3 people DC'd as we were popping including a WHM and RDM) it was fun. I was only able to stay alive for about 15 seconds of it before it AF'd and killed me, but I did about 4k damage in that time even without Angon on (they forgot to bring a Drg it seems). Mighty Strikes/Bergressor/Warcry/WarriorCharge Kings Justice is brutal! Did 1400 damage on both my Kings Justices (not sure if this is as good as I think but loved the EPEEN!)

I'm new to the ls, but the method of choice seems to be to put a pld on each side of the mob and then DDs SATA the plds. So, I think I'm going to have to keep with the /thf.

Keep in mind that there is a cap to the amount of enmity that the tanks can build up. If all the melees are doing this, the tanks will have capped enmity in no time whatsoever. It truthfully doesn't take much time for a melee to build up capped enmity through melee damage alone on sky gods. I'd say if the god lives more than 5 minutes, the tanks are already capped on enmity, and just waiting for everyone to catch up.

My second concern is my sky ls seems to like to do another god or two when doing a kirin run (time permitting). I'm new to the ls, but the method of choice seems to be to put a pld on each side of the mob and then DDs SATA the plds. So, I think I'm going to have to keep with the /thf. But I do appreciate the suggestion and if I am wrong about any of this, please let me know.

Thanks.

Every sky shell I've known has used this as their preferred method. None of them had zerg capabilities as they were just regular sky shells to get gear.

You don't really use /THF for the accuracy its for the crit bonus on single shot WS's. Against HNM's that rape your pDiff like Kirin its a pretty significant damage increase.

Yeah, I took two small downgrades on warrior in order to fund monk. Monk, by the way, is really fun. If your thinking about it, I'd say give it a try. I've gone from 32 to 48 in the last four days and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The only hard part is that tanks simply cannot hold hate off me. I'm at the point that I'll be putting on Crow head and legs just to deal with healer mp issues. I'd by lying if I said this didn't bring a smile to my face.

I did enjoy leveling MNK up to 48 or so. Now that I have a few mil to spare I might try to push that a bit further (rebuy o.kotes and brown belt).

Having PUP as my second favorite job in the game, I find it amusing that MNK is able to crank out such strong raw damage with such ease in comparison. Whereas on PUP you have to juggle maneuvers nonstop to achieve the same effect.